Three-quarters of people in Shropshire wanting to buy a home are being edged out of the market by high house prices and massive mortgages, it was claimed today.
But now proposals have been drawn up which could add a further 12,000 new homes to the 52,200 already proposed to meet demand in the county over the next 18 years.
Today, a new independent report for the region says the county could cope with even more housing over the same timescale - suggesting anything from 1,900 to 11,900 more homes.
It comes after Councillor Heather Kidd, housing “champion” on the executive overseeing the county’s transition to unitary status, warned 75 per cent of Shropshire people wanting a home cannot afford to buy.Councillor Kidd said half the number of new homes proposed could be “affordable” - if the right policies were in place.
But she warned: “Even with house prices coming down, people are having to borrow eight to 10 times their wages.
“Prices will have to drop a long way to become affordable.
“I am also concerned houses are built in the right place for people.”
The new study, which was carried out by independent planning consultants Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners, on behalf of the Government Office for the West Midlands, suggest three options for building more homes in the region.
Each says rural areas in the Shropshire County Council area could cope with a further 1,900 homes, while Telford & Wrekin could have anything from zero to “ambitious” proposals for 10,000 further homes, depending on the preferred option.
The extra homes would be on top of a planned 25,700 for Shropshire and 26,500 for Telford & Wrekin which have already been outlined in the West Midlands regional spatial strategy (RSS) - although this will be subject to a public examination by an independent panel next spring.
However, the study says increased rail and road capacity in Telford & Wrekin is “likely to be required to address localised congestion” and developments may have to “await market recovery”.
11 Comments
Oh I don’t know!
Give it 6 months and when prices have plummetted to a realistic sensible level {as opposed to previous silly get-rich quick rip-off prices} then everyone will be able to afford one. Of course no-one will have any money to lend them but there you go….lifes a ^*!!# sometimes!
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Why dont people live in caravans? They are very cheap as little as £500. Just add a woodstove and they are very cosy. It feels like you are on holiday all year round and you’ll be saving the planet aswell.
As all green afficiandos will tell you, cement creates it own weigh in CO2 in its production!
Go Green, Go Caravan!
P.S. If anyone wants advice on circumventing planning regulations, just ask.
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aaarggh no !
If Shropshire remains a ‘desirable ‘ area to live in, local people will ALWAYS be outbid for houses by ‘incomers’ from outside the area.
Building more houses will just encourage more incomers , with all the related environmental damage as they will probably be commuting back to urbanised areas every day. Solution ? - more social housing, specifically for people who actually WORK in Shropshire.
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Here we go! House prices stagnating, mortgage offers down 90% last month, housing market in a “crisis”, Land Registry staff made redundant due to lack of work and here’s a bright spark from the council telling us that now is the time to build more houses because there’s a shortage. “Housing champion”? Sounds more like the words of a “house builders’ champion” to me. If government really does want to help those of us suffering in the current economic climate, maybe they could persuade the new unitary authority to abolish that council-funded job for a start and put the money to better use. Isn’t anyone else worried that these free-spending bureaucrats in charge of our future seem just a little bit out of touch with the plight of the majority?
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What’s more worrying Rodney is that people don’t know the difference between a councillor (expenses but unpaid) and a council officer (paid) - if you read the article again you’ll see that the housing champion a role being taken by COUNCILLOR Heather Kidd - so there’s no ‘council funded job’ they should be abolishing.
And as for the plight of the majority - they may not quite be the majority in what is a rapidly ageing county, but there are an awful lot of young people who are moving out of the area because they can’t afford a property - and in the long term that means school closures and a disincentive to employers starting businesses.
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nothing wrong with caravans except when one is towed. plenty of room for houseboats on the shrewsbury canal, no water but you cannot have everything. how about converting the ditherington flax mill into flats
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Thank you for that observation Rob; I’m always happy to acknowledge my mistakes. It’s true that I had assumed that the overseeing executive doing this vital work were paid to do the job, but I am prepared to accept your statement that they do that work for nothing, obviously in their spare time or after work. Anyway, the question that springs to mind after reflection is this: if the figure of 64400 new-builds covers all the people in Shropshire who want to buy a home, and, as Heather Kidd claims, 75% are not able to buy one of them unless it’s “affordable”, who exactly does she expect to build those 48300 low-cost, “affordable” houses.
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easy answer…
get out of the uk. while you still can ,
it going to the dogs anyway.
they will milk every penny from you and still kick you down.
what Great about its wet ,cold
and you all go on holiday away from it?
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Devon: I hope you dont have an issue with gypsys towing caravans? And what happened to all those New Age Travellers in the 80’s? Have they all given up their ideals and now brought into the capital culture of buying a house and so fueling the shortage?
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I myself come from a romany background.
Caravans are very luxuries nowadays plus you do not have to pay huge sums in council tax.
Which no doubt everyone will be paying a lot more after the fiasco in Iceland.
The way forward is buy a caravan and move from site to site this way no council tax to pay.
Simple as chips and cheap as chips as well.
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I would like to say that I dont actuallt come from a Romany background although my grand father used to sleep in a horse drawn gypsy caravan in the back garden. Mainly because he was drunk all the time and got thrown out by my grandmother.
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